Minister to file complaint over anti-vaxxer 'hanging' Tweet
Prominent anti-vaxxer compares Covid-19 vaccine push to Nazi medical experiments
Justice Minister Sam Tanson © Photo credit: Gerry Huberty
(This article has been updated with a comment from the prosecution in the third paragraph)
Justice Minister Sam Tanson is planning to file a legal complaint against a prominent anti-vaxxer over a Tweet in which he compared Luxembourg's push for Covid-19 vaccines to Nazi medical experiments and appeared to endorse hanging as a punishment for politicians.
Journalist Jean-Marie Jacoby took to Twitter to say that "death by hanging would have been the sanction of the American military judges at Nuremberg in 1947 for Bettel and Tanson if they really want to force people to participate in a 3rd phase clinical medical trial. . . ups".
Tanson is planning to file a lawsuit against Jacoby, and she and Prime Minister Xavier Bettel have already referred the Tweet to the country's prosecution, public broadcaster 100,7 reported on Tuesday. Luxembourg's prosecution had not received the complaint as of midday on Tuesday, a spokesperson said.
Luxembourg has recently tightened the screws on the unvaccinated, but so far, there is no vaccine mandate in place. However, Bettel in parliament said that the government is looking at a potential mandate.
The Tweet references the ethical principles of the Nuremberg Code elaborated in 1947 in the wake of Nazi medical experiments. Most experts agree that the Code is unrelated to vaccine mandates as the Covid-19 vaccines are licenced and tested.
"The Nuremberg Code has no bearing whatsoever on vaccine mandate issues," Arthur L. Caplan, Mitty Professor of Bioethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told Reuters earlier this month.
Jacoby, an accredited journalist with the Press Council in Luxembourg who writes for the Communist-party run Zeitung vum Lëtzebuerger Vollek, has repeatedly compared health measures and vaccine policies to fascism and Nazism on social media.
He has also been a prominent speaker at anti-vaccination and anti-Covid measures protests in Luxembourg, some of which have turned raucous an led to arrests.
Comparisons to World War II, Nazism and the Holocaust have been a recurrent theme at the Luxembourg protests, drawing condemnation from various politicians and organisations for relativising Nazism and the systematic murder of Jews.
More than a week ago, the police discovered a high quantity of explosives and other weapons and ammunition in the east of Luxembourg following an investigation in the wake of anti-Covid protests.
